


A Happily Extended Invitation

by FB Wickersham (perpetfic)



Series: The Blue Stones [13]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Female Protagonist, Gen, Magic, Supernatural - Freeform, The Blue Stones, mentions of bad parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 06:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12647574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/FB%20Wickersham
Summary: The day Hazel is invited to train as a Blue Stone.





	A Happily Extended Invitation

**Author's Note:**

> Hat tip to HugeAlienPie for giving this a scrub! This piece is NOT part of the upcoming novella, just another scene in the life sort of thing.

The doorbell shrilled, and Hazel nearly fell out of her window seat. People rarely used the bell because they thought it was just a decoration in the door. The truth was, if you turned it like a key, it echoed through the house loud as a fire alarm, and Hazel got the holy shit scared out of her every time. 

She heard Gran walk across the house to the front door and heard her greet someone. She sounded welcoming, so Hazel figured it wasn't the Jehovah's Witnesses or someone on a political tear. Gran couldn't stand either. The first she was too polite to simply shut the door on and always bemoaned nodding along until she could gently get them off the porch. The second she was forever amazed showed up on her porch, given her known history of yelling obscenities until they left. 

"Hazel?" Gran said, voice just outside her door.

"Come in," Hazel replied. 

Gran poked her head into Hazel's room. "You've got visitors."

"Me?" Hazel couldn't think of a single friend who'd come through the front door, let alone ring the bell. Everyone they were friendly with knew you came in the back, only half-knocking as you let yourself in. 

"Two Aunties," Gran said, and a pleased smile snuck across her face.

This time, Hazel did fall out of the window seat, but it was in her hurry to get up. "No way!"

"They're in the living room. I'm getting them coffee. What would you like?"

"Lemonade," Hazel said. "Really?" she whispered, though she was still sure it carried. The whole house wasn't more than 800 square feet, and it liked to carry sound around and show it the scenery. 

"Really," Gran whispered back. "Hurry up."

Hazel took a quick glance in the mirror. Her hair had been staticky all day with an incoming thunderstorm, and she'd yanked it into a messy knot at the top of her head before breakfast had been finished. She knew there was no helping how it looked, so she just tightened the hair tie to make sure it stayed in place and left her bedroom. 

The living room was a left turn, then an immediate right. Two women sat side-by-side on the couch. They both wore the kind of summer dresses Hazel remembered her mom wearing to work on hot days. They both wore blue stones around their necks. "Hi," Hazel said, feeling shy but wanting to be brazen. "Gran says you wanted to see me."

"Yes." The woman on the left smiled. Her dress was printed with flowers, and her stone was set in a wide, silver necklace that reminded Hazel of the pictures of Cleopatra in her history book. The woman even looked a bit like Cleopatra, with long, thin braids and a nose that looked like it would be perfectly straight in profile. "I'm Auntie Trinity."

"I'm Hazel," Hazel shook her hand.

"Auntie Holly," said the other woman. Her dress was striped, and she had a pixie cut and freckles. Her stone was tiny, only a little bigger than a seed bead, and it was in a setting attached to a delicate chain. 

"Hazel," Hazel said again and immediately closed her eyes in deep embarrassment. "Sorry. I said that already."

"No need to apologize," Gran said as she walked in the room with a tray full of drinks. "I'm Art or Ms. Harrington, whichever suits best."

"I like Art," Auntie Trinity said. She took a cup of coffee with a quiet thank you. Auntie Holly did the same. 

"So you know who we are, then," Auntie Holly said to Hazel. 

Hazel sipped her lemonade and sat on the floor as she nodded. "Yeah. Gran's still got Great-great--" she glanced at Gran, who was seated in the armchair across from the couch.

"One more," Gran said.

"--great-grandma Hazel's diaries. The digital ones, I mean. She says you guys have the originals."

"We do," Auntie Holly said. "We're happy to have them in our library."

"We were very happy to see you flare open this year," Auntie Trinity said. "Though you may not have felt anything."

"I didn't," Hazel said, "but Gran said she felt like something was different."

Gran shrugged when the Aunties looked at her. "I wasn't sure if it was puberty or the move or the magic, but I really was hoping for the third."

"So were we," Auntie Trinity said. She turned her attention back to Hazel. "Tell me, Hazel, what do you know about The Blue Stones?"

"Well," Hazel dragged out the word, giving herself a moment to think. "I know you've been around since before we even had thirteen colonies. I know you teach everyone at The House, but I can't figure out where it is." The Aunties chuckled, but Hazel could tell it wasn't at her expense. "I know I can say no if I don't want to go with you, and I know you'll teach me magic. And I know what my Grandma Hazel wrote, but I don't know how much things have changed since then."

"That's a good start," Auntie Holly said. "I've read your Grandma Hazel's diaries, and I can tell you, we've added some things as they've shown up, but you'll learn many of the things she knew as well."

"You'd stay at The House," Auntie Trinity added. "You'd start in late August, and you can always visit home if you need to. Do you know what the Liminway is?" Hazel shook her head. "It's like a highway, but it's magic. If you walk on it or drive on it, you can get to The House from just about anywhere fairly quickly. It's something we set up to keep The House location secure and so you and your fellow students can easily visit if you need to."

"You have to learn to use the Liminway," Auntie Holly said. "But we teach it first thing. It's fairly simple. 

"If I have to learn it, how do I get there for school?"

"An auntie will come and pick you up. You and whoever you'd like to help you move in."

"Gran," Hazel answered, and she bit her lip and glanced at Gran when she realized how quickly she'd said it. "I mean--"

"I would love to go," Gran said. "Grandma Hazel had a few sketches of the layout, but to see it in person would be a real treat."

"And we'll show you the grounds, of course," Auntie Holly said. 

"Once you know where The House is, you can find it again," Auntie Trinity said. "So, you would be free to visit, though the Liminway wouldn't be open to you without Hazel."

"I don't have the sense of direction of a drunk, three-legged goat. Hazel's been my navigator since she learned to read a map."

Hazel looked from Gran back to the Aunties. They were both smiling at her, and she felt proud but also too seen, like they could look through her skin and see how hard her heart was pumping. "Do I…" she bit her lip again, a habit her mother hated, and that thought made her stop. "Who signs off for me to go to school? Someone has to sign a form saying I'm allowed to go to a public school, so someone has to sign something so I can go to a magic school, right?"

"That's right," Auntie Trinity said. "We thought your gran could do that."

"She's not my legal guardian," Hazel said in a rush. She clamped her mouth shut, but it betrayed her a second later. "I mean, she's my gran, and I trust her and everything, but my parents still have formal custody and they--"

"Hazelnut," Gran said quietly, in that soft, warm tone that always reminded Hazel to take a breath. "We'll work it out."

"They don't want me to go," Hazel said. She blinked away tears and stared into her lemonade. "I want to, but they don't." The quiet was hard, and Hazel looked up expecting for the Aunties to be giving her the pitying looks she'd been getting for years but especially this summer when she'd formally moved in with Gran. Instead, they were giving her understanding looks like Gran always did. "I really want to go," Hazel said.

"We do have to get legal permission," Auntie Trinity said, "but it's a great start to know how excited you are."

"Your Grandma Hazel was very excited," Auntie Holly added. "It's not in her diaries, but the recruiting Aunties in her year made note of it. She tried to pack a bag the day they showed up."

Hazel smiled and quickly wiped her arm across her eyes. "Really?"

"Oh, yes. Her parents were very supportive and tried to convince the Aunties to take her early, but that's not something we can do even now."

"There's a lot of magic residue you have to scrub off The House between terms," Auntie Trinity explained. "A brand new trainee walking in the door can make weird things happen if the whole place isn't spit-polished." She laughed. "It took them a while to figure that one out. For about thirty years, they'd take students early and wonder why the walls were melting."

" _Melting_?" Hazel asked. 

"Oh, there's the one story from Auntie Bertie--she was the librarian when your grandma Hazel was a trainee--" said Auntie Holly, "and she has a long journal entry about the Blue Stones rescuing a ghost for the first time, and they brought her back to The House to help her re-learn how to talk, and her energy caused the chimney to change shape."

"No," Hazel breathed.

"Yes." Auntie Trinity's face was bright with pride and excitement. Auntie Holly's was the same. "They left it since it didn't stop the chimney from working, but we have pictures in the library. You can see it. And there are multiple records from the Blue Stones of the time about it happening so suddenly."

"Wow," Hazel said. She glanced at Gran, who was beaming along with the Aunties, as though she'd been expecting such stories. "How big is the library?"

"We're not sure," Auntie Holly said, her smile turning into an amused smirk. "There's so much latent magic in the books and then so much magic in the air it sort of just grows without us doing anything to it."

"That sounds amazing," Hazel said.

"Hazel helped raise funds to add a new room on the county library," Gran interjected. "They just finished it this spring."

"That's lovely," Auntie Trinity said. She smiled at Hazel, as warm and welcoming as when she showed up. "We'd love to have you join us this fall."

"I want to. I really want to." Hazel couldn't help glancing at Gran again.

"She'll be there," Gran said, and Hazel recognized the set of her mouth. Gran was about to do battle. 

"Wonderful," Auntie Holly said. She and Auntie Trinity stood. They shook hands with Hazel and Gran, and they saw themselves out.

Hazel picked up the half-empty coffee cups and carried them into the kitchen. Gran followed with Hazel's empty glass and her own water bottle. "Do you really think you can convince them?"

"You want to do this, and there's no harm for you in it. If they push back, I'll call my lawyer."

"Gran! You said you wouldn't!" Hazel screwed up her face and thumped the coffee mugs down in the sink hard enough that she sloshed lukewarm coffee on her hands. "I'm sorry."

Gran leaned against the kitchen counter and waited for Hazel to look at her. "Why?"

Hazel shifted her weight and looked at the floor. "For yelling."

"It's okay to yell sometimes," Gran said. "I did tell your parents I wouldn't involve my lawyer, and I promise I won't do it unless I have to. But my job is to make sure you feel happy and secure, and I can't think of a single reason to keep you from training as a Blue Stone."

"Mom thinks they're dumb, and Dad thinks they're frauds."

"That's true," Gran agreed. "But you and I have done our research, right? We read those papers by all those scientists."

"Yeah," Hazel said quietly. She looked up from the floor and felt tears in her eyes again. "Can I really go?"

"You want to, and I want you to. Between the two of us, I think we've got enough stubborn to pull it off." Gran opened her arms, and Hazel ducked against her for a hug. "You came to live with me so I could take care of you. There might be some yelling and cussing coming up, but I promise it's to take care of you, okay?"

"Okay."

"And if it scares you, you tell me, because maybe I need to reel myself in, okay?"

"Okay." 

"Good girl." Gran pressed a kiss to the side of Hazel's head. "I'll call them after dinner."

Hazel wiped her eyes. "I think I'll be in my room when you do that."

"That's fine. I know what you want. You don't need to repeat it to them."

Hazel forced a smile, and she felt it shake. "Thanks, Gran."

"You're welcome, Hazelnut."

**Author's Note:**

> (Feel free to scream with me about Blue Stones on twitter [@effbeewick](https://twitter.com/effbeewick).)
> 
> 1\. More Aunties! Auntie Trinity and Auntie Holly are one of a few sets of Aunties who handle recruitment. It's a sort of back-office gig, though they are always around the house and assist other Aunties who are teaching full time. Recruitment Aunties do the necessary scrying and research to find new Blue Stones. 
> 
> 2\. Hazel's parents aren't the worst, but they're middling at best. They think they bring out the best in each other, but they don't. It's complicated and will be explored further.
> 
> 3\. Gran's name is an inside joke to myself, and I have delighted myself. Also, Harrington is her maiden name, and Hazel's dad thought it showed how cool he was that he was okay with Hazel taking her mother's name. Her mother thinks he actually is that cool. He is not.
> 
> 4\. If I ever rewrite the Aunties story where they're having the pre-term meeting, the recruitment Aunties will be added. This is what happens when you fire from the hip. 
> 
> 5.Doorbell based off my own grandmother's doorbell, which looked like a key half-stuck in a fancy lock, and it was the loudest goddamn thing I ever heard in my life. ([This video isn't nearly loud enough, but you get the idea.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf17rNHxtp0))


End file.
